d
so strangely with their wise legislation and scientific attainments; and
their priests are supposed to have concealed, under mystic symbols,
mysterious truths, which they imparted to the initiated, while they
taught a grosser system to the common mind. While in Egypt the
Israelites seem never to have been exposed to the debasing immoralities
which prevailed among the nations around the promised land.

The children of Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham four hundred years.
When Jehovah called his people out of Egypt they were fitted to receive
the laws and institutions which he designed to give them, and to take
the high position he assigned them among the nations of the earth. And
lest, during their long sojourn in the wilderness, they should lose the
arts of civilized life, they were employed in the construction of the
tabernacle. By the minute enumeration of all that was required for the
completion of this work, we see that the erection involved an extensive
acquaintance with the mechanical arts, and of those, too, which indicate
a high degree of advancement in the luxuries of polished life. Thus the
generation born in the wilderness were instructed, and preserved from
degenerating into mere shepherds, hunters, or warriors. The restless
were occupied, and the work proved a bond of union for the whole people,
exciting the interest and employing the energies of all the different
classes of the great multitude.

The long ages of the sojourn of the children of Jacob were drawing to a
close. The iniquity of the Canaanites was now full; the children of
Israel were prepared to be numbered among the nations of the earth; and
the events dictated by the craft and policy of men were ordained to
promote the infinite designs of Jehovah. For four hundred years the
descendants of Jacob had dwelt in Goshen. From a pastoral they were
already become an agricultural people; they had learned to prize the
comforts of an established life, of quiet, peaceful homes, of pleasant
places of abode. Dwelling in the richest portion of Egypt, protected
from all foreign aggression, they there enjoyed abundance, peace, and
prosperity, to which their wanderings in the desert furnished a sad
contrast.

The policy of Egypt had excluded the Israelites from her crimes. The
energy, the love of change and adventure, which a martial life imparts,
were unfelt; and had not oppression driven the Israelites from Egypt,
the promise of that goodly land destine